Want higher quality live audio? If you want it done right...

Concert taping is at least forty years old—the First Free Underground Grateful Dead Tape Exchange formed in the early 1970s after all. It was an informal network of Deadheads willing to share tapes with each other in person or via mail, some described it as the original Napster. Les Kippel remembered smuggling in extra batteries, tapes, and microphones so he could capture an entire evening. He started out with a Japanese portable tape machine but insisted the real quality recordings didn't come until '74, when Sony came out with the 152 and the ECM-99 stereo microphones.

Today, firsthand concert audio can be accessed much easier. It's among the first results on any YouTube song search, venue partnerships exist such as NPR's "Live In Concert" series, and you can always find modern incarnations of the tape exchange (like the popular NYCTaper.com).

"As long as we've been a band, we’ve had a good relationship with tapers," said Jason Cohen, keyboardist for blues outfit, The Ryan Montbleau Band. "We've always tried to get good, quality recordings out there. But what’s out there tended to be a pair of mics at the back of the room and it didn’t sound that great. So we wanted control."

Recently, the band started touring with a digital mixing console to create live recordings they'd sell via USBs (320kbps MP3 fortmat) while on tour. "A friend bought one and showed it to me. '1998 called and they want their technology back,'" Cohen said. "We had a talk—we knew some bands who were doing live audio streaming through UStream, but their results weren’t the best. I thought in this age if we have an idea, you can Google until you find a way to do it."

That’s exactly what Cohen and company did. Taking the band's digital mixing console, an Avid Venue SC48, Cohen and the band's sound engineer set out to find a way to use this technology for livestreaming. The tinkering went down during a 12-hour experimenting session in New Hampshire last summer. The mixing console came with Pro Tools LE8, so they started there. But Cohen quickly recognized it wasn't going to work within this plan (try bouncing to MP3 quickly enough for a live feed). While fiddling with Logic, he noticed the program could recognize the SC48; the device's drive made it possible for other audio programs to access it.

Eventually for the quick recording purposes, the band settled on Audio Hijack Pro from Rogue Amoeba—a program designed to create high quality recordings from the Web or off an app like Skype. It too recognized the SC48 as an input. Cohen purchased a few Waves plug-ins (studio quality tools like multi-band compresser C4 and maximizer L2) to improve the final audio mix. The music was finally available at a speed that could translate live and a quality the band was comfortable with. All they needed next was a way to broadcast it out.

Rogue Amoeba happened to provide a solid option called Nicecast, allowing Cohen to create an online radio station to broadcast shows and replay past recordings during off hours. It took a little tinkering—Cohen even reached out to the company and received a response from the CEO; he had never seen this combo used before. But Nicecast recognized Audio Hijack as an input option and the resulting project now feeds RMBLive.com each night the band performs.

With a theoretical process in place, the band began the stream during shows in January. "WiFi was a big issue at first," said Cohen. "During soundcheck that first night we streamed it as a test. The house WiFi got overloaded and just completely shut down. Since then we’ve made a couple of groundrules for the streaming, because we need reliability. One bad experience with it and fans won’t come back."

The band's guidelines? House WiFi needs to be a secure network for starters. As soon as they get things running on it, Cohen will upload 6 to 7 GB of home movies just to see how the network will handle a transfer of that size.

But the Ryan Montbleau band doesn't get to play venues like Madison Square Garden every night (upcoming dates include: Sterling, New York and Pawtucket, Rhode Island), so Cohen wanted a backup plan to keep the streams coming. The band can now work off tethered WiFi from one of two jailbroken iPhones, giving them access to the stream as long as either AT&T or Verizon 3G is available.

Currently, it’s just an audio stream. The band has a server in upstate New York and they set up a large buffer on the server side to ensure functionality (the delay is anywhere from 20 to 25 seconds. Cohen will even go check it whenever Montbleau decides to perform a few solo songs during a set). But there's internal discussion about continually evolving their live show Web presence. They're experimenting with adding live images to RMBLive.com that the band or select fans could upload immediately. They have a chatroom they've toyed with for potential uses like having fans vote on song selections (Cohen can be found in there interacting with fans on any given night), though they're wary of letting an online experience dictate what happens at the physical show.

Ultimately though, the band would love to provide a full performance experience to fans who want access anywhere. "We're interested in video but bandwidth is the biggest issue," said Cohen. "We can't do it through an iPhone tether at this point. Coachella just did this amazing series of YouTube live streams, and for a stream to be worthwhile it needs to be approaching that quality."

For bands looking to follow in their footsteps, Cohen said it's possible but you need to plan it out in advance. The Ryan Montbleau band travels with their own equipment (including the live audio tools) and they're lucky to have a dedicated front of house sound engineer savvy enough to handle it. Bands that have to deal with venue variables (using the house sound guy, relying on local WiFi, etc.) could easily run into trouble. Plus to get the equipment capable of producing audio at this level, things get expensive: the plug-ins can reach $1,000 and the digital mixer will run more than 25 times that. Sadly, none of those concerns includes potential rights issues (such as other parties who may want to sell the audio or venue partnerships with other streamers). The Ryan Montbleau Band still operates as an independent outfit.

The Ryan Montbleau Band's next set of shows begins on May 25 in Buffalo, New York and currently includes dates through the end of July. Fans can listen in during any night of the tour through RMBLive.com.